John, > > Sounds nifty until you realize Kyoto is a BS government scarcity decree on > the world economy. Climate shifts from warm periods to deep ice ages have > come and gone well before we ever got here and the factors affecting such > things are probably beyond our powers, and up to much greater influences. > Volcanoes for example can absolutely dwarf impacts of man made sources > depending on their activity. Putting arbitrary limits and controls that will > have huge ramifications on the output of the world economy based on > questionable science and data is foolhardy. > I agree wholeheartedly :o) I never subscribed to the idea that carbon emissions cause global warming (especially as just 20 years ago the same mob predicted a new ice age because the carbon cloued would block the sun). However, I do care about the quality of air I breathe and the amount of pollutants my vegetables absorb (you haven't tasted lettuce until you tried some in a village in Asia), although I can't do much about the stuff that's in my meat. I liked the concept of carbon credits because I am a pratical minded person and happen to have lived in areas where rain forrests were logged and the land turned into a barren surface in a matter of a few months. Paying people not to use their natural resources makes perfect sense to me, and having those pay who consume the most appears the fairest deal. It's not as if the West couldn't afford cleaner waste disposal and gasification instead of slow incineration. It just costs more.
Being a lot in Malaysia I have also seen the sky yellowish grey for weeks on end from forrest fires started by illegal loggers 600 km away. Being ocean front we get the best air most of the time and having to breathe that grey soup lead to all sorts of complications. Paying the people there to stop logging hence makes sense to me. I do however agree, that the markets should set the price - as in fact they did during the pilot projects and case studies. The timeber value of the tree, divided by the 20 years it would take to replace loggable growth times, times the amount of carbon the tree would absorb, times estimated number of trees per hectare. To dermine the amount of excessive carbon (ie. who has to pay and how much) simply take the total amount of carbon emitted by the industry of a country and divide it by the number of inhabitants. Do a global estimat to get the average, and then calculate who produces more emissions per capita and how much. And this way of calculating it actually rigged in favor of industrialized nations who have access to the latest technologies while developping countries use mainly outdated installations that pollute much more per capita, but overall much less than their Western counterparts. Don't forget, it all started with us industrialized nations telling them developping nations that they can't cut their trees anymore and can't use certain gas compounds for refrigeration, etc, etc. So, in all fairness, it wasn't them who started it. They were happy logging, strip-mining and polluting for a quick buck while we busily dragnet-fished 12 miles off their shores... I'm neither green, nor an environmentalist and like making money (in gold please) as much as the next, but I'd like to ensure that there is something left to spend it on. Cheers, Robert. budget & privacy website hosting http://www.cyberica.net start a profitable online business http://www.cyberfrontier.biz budget domain registrations http://www.u2planet.com --- You are currently subscribed to e-gold-list as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Use e-gold's Secure Randomized Keyboard (SRK) when accessing your e-gold account(s) via the web and shopping cart interfaces to help thwart keystroke loggers and common viruses.
